Taglines: A comedy about life, death and freedom.
Husbands movie storyline. Approaching middle age, Archie, Gus, Harry and Stuart are suburban New Yorkers, white collar professionals, husbands, fathers, and best friends. Stuart dies suddenly of a heart attack. Immediately following the funeral, Archie, Gus and Harry feel the need to spend time together not so much to mourn Stuart’s death, but rather mourn their collective lost sense of immortality. After a two day binge of trying to recapture the sense of their youth in various ways, the three know that they have to return to the realities of life, meaning returning to family and work.
However, an incident that occurs between Harry and his wife – which is a culmination of previous such incidents – leads to Harry deciding to extend his time away from reality, this escape both literally and figuratively, which Archie and Gus happily oblige. Following this extension, the three will individually have to figure out what their immediate future holds based on the events since the funeral in combination with their adults lives up to this point. Those decisions may or may not reflect what is truly in their hearts.
Husbands is a 1970 American comedy-drama film written and directed by John Cassavetes. It stars Ben Gazzara, Peter Falk, and Cassavetes as three middle class men in the throes of a midlife crisis following the death of a close friend. Distributed by Columbia Pictures, Husbands polarized critics upon release. Jay Cocks of Time described it as Cassavetes’s finest work, but other critics, including Vincent Canby, Pauline Kael, and Roger Ebert, lambasted it.
Cassavetes has stated that this was a very personal film for him, having experienced the loss of a loved one after his older brother died at the age of 30. Cassavetes wrote the dialogue after improvising with Falk and Gazzara, and built the characters around the personalities of the actors. Falk said that he was asked by Cassavetes to appear in Husbands at a lunch meeting at which Cassavetes agreed to appear with Falk in the 1976 Elaine May film Mikey and Nicky.
Falk said that he and Gazzara contributed to the Husbands script, but that the story, structure and scenes were devised by Cassavetes. Falk suggested the scene at the end of the movie where Archie and Gus arrive home and divide up the gifts. A scene between Archie and Julie was improvised in a hotel room, with Cassavetes at the camera and no other crew present.
Husbands (1970)
Directed by: John Cassavetes
Starring: Ben Gazzara, Peter Falk, John Cassavetes, Jenny Runacre, Jenny Lee Wright, Noelle Kao, Eleanor Cody Gould, Meta Shaw Stevens, Leola Harlow, Delores Delmar, Peggy Lashbrook, Sarah Felcher
Screenplay by: John Cassavetes
Production Design by: Fred C. Caruso, Robert Greenhut
Cinematography by: Victor J. Kemper
Film Editing by: John Cassavetes
Makeup Department: Robert Laden, Tommie Manderson
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for mature thematic elements including sexual situations, language, drunkenness, and brief domestic violenc.
Distributed by: Columbia Pictures
Release Date: December 8, 1970
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